..New School Year..

Woah!! time goes too quickly, its already been 3 months! it needs to start slowing down...

I have started a new school year at Yamanote High School and now a grade 2 student (NOT equivalent to grade 2 in Australia) and its been good so far. Because Japanese bow to people with more authority than them, whenever i walk past grade 1 students they stop and bow to me, its funny. And of course all the first year girls who just started at this school and are seeing me for the first time freak out whenever they see me hahaha!

I have kind of decided to join chorus club, which is like singing and various stuff like that. Half of the reason i joined was because my good friends are in that club so it should be fun.

Friend from chorus club>>>



Also just last week i started learning piano! i like it. And usually when i get home from school i play it for a while before dinner time. Also the chorus club teacher said he would give me lessons as well so it all worked out well! Realistically, the chorus club is every day, INCLUDING Saturday and Sunday and holidays, but I'm foreign, so that means i only go when i want to. I will probably go few times a week, except not Tuesdays because thats when i have Japanese lessons if you remember.
Oh, and speaking of Japanese, in July i will be doing a Japanese exam and i will try and pass rank 3. I filled in the application yesterday. Then in December i will try rank 2. Rank 2 is pretty good, considering No.1 is the highest rank. Except, exchange students don't do rank 1 exam because it is EXTREMELY difficult, even for Japanese people! So the best i can do is rank 2, which is still very good.

The other day i went to a pet salon place to pick up our dogs because they got washed and groomed there. When we went to pick them up i saw these poodles>>>





haha cute.

A couple weeks ago i was walking home from school and on the way home is a cemetary, INCLUDING a temple! so i walked around and had a look at a japanese version of a cememtary. They are actually really nice, with marble head stones and its really clean and pretty, unlike Australian cemetaries where they are vandalised and broken, etc. There was also a traditional japanese looking pond which i liked.....except i dont have a photo.





My home stay is good, i enjoy it. My host parents are nice and we are always laughing. Still acting as a translator for the swiss guy that lives with us, i feel smart when he asks me to translate something haha!

Next weekend (May 1st) i am going to a few places in Hokkaido with my family. I have about a weeks holiday then because of something called 'Golden Week', which is like, a lot of different holidays all next to each other, so its called Golden Week.

Last Saturday i went to the Canadian girls house and we had the best lunch EVER!! IT was choclate fondue and cheese fondue, SOOO good!



Today i have no school and currently at home. Its because my school have health tests today, except i had done all of that before i came to Japan so i didn't need to go today. INSTEAD i have just finished writing (well typing) a speech for tomorrow night. Its a rotary dinner and i haven't been to any rotary events in over 2 months so tomorrow night i have to say a speech and tell them what I've been doing lately.

It getting hot lately, like, im talking more than 10 degrees!!! I dont think i would be ready to come back to Townsville in the middle of its summer... but last week one day its snowed for the whole day!! it was crazy! its the middle of spring and it pouring down snow all day even though it wasnt cold. But i think the snow has definately stopped now until November/December.

This Saturday I'm going snowboarding one last time before the snow melts at the ski places, so im looking forward to it! Im going with the other exchange students, we all prefer snowboarding over skiing haha

ok i think its time to eat, then do some Japanese homework..it never ends. Catch ya later!

New Family....New Rules....

Ok well, its Wednesday afternoon, and that means i go back to school tomorrow!! NOOOO!! :O
So its back to waking up early again...

On Friday i didnt go out anywhere and just stayed home. This was so that i could pack which i did in a record 2 hours! Then i spent the rest of the day facebooking/youtubing. FINALLY found some music that i like thanks to Ellen (The Japanese girl from Australia). She showed me some music by a guy called 'Shimizu Shota' and a girl called 'Bahashishi' and their music is really good! The guy sings a mix of pop/RnB and its taken over 2 months to find good Japanese music, so im really pleased about that. :D I listen to them everyday now...

So i moved house Saturday after lunch time, This new house (yes, they live in a a 2 story house)
is about 10 minutes walk from school so thats definately much easier in the mornings/afternoons than the old bus-subway-bus routine. The house is nice and they have 2 border collie dogs, they're so cute! They love me and always jump up on me if im sitting on the couch haha



One is a boy and the other is a girl and they both do dog training. The male dog's specialty is frizbee and he enters competitions usually during the warmer months, and the female dog does hurtles (like how horses do) and on Monday me and my host mum took them to a 'dog park' and i saw how good the male dog was at frizbee!! Hes PRO. Also i usally walk the dogs with my host mum in the afternoons.

Now umm, about my family, theyre really nice, its just the mum and dad living there. They have a daughter but at the moment she is living in New Zealand on exchange, but not through Rotary. She comes back in July. They are pretty funny and the mum is always laughing! And there is also a guy from Switzerland staying with us as well who is my age. He got here about a week and a half ago and is only staying with this family for a month, so in a few weeks he will go to another family.
He only knows very basic Japanese so i have been a translator during the day, which makes me feel so smart haha!
The only problem i have is this host family's rules. Like, when i first got here the mum told me i can not leave the house for the next month except for school and lessons. I have lost a whole month of my exchange to hang out with friends......

Also, i can only use the computer 2 hours a week. Its 2 days a week i can use the computer, but only 1 hour a day, so in total, 2 hours. Thank GOD i have an iPhone with sufficient internet otherwise id get mad!! They have those 2 strict rules but they arent ACTUALLY strict people, so i dont get it, it doesnt make sense...oh welllllll

Because this family only have 1 proper bedroom, i am using the traditional Japanese room they have which is usually for guests until the Swiss guy changes families. It has tatami mat floors, those paper doors you see in movies and i sleep ona futon, its not so bad. It will only be for a few weeks.
My room....





Except one of the dogs had crazy and rips holes in the doors so now at the bottom of one of the doors there are all these shredded parts thanks to the dog hahaha....






During the past few days i have just been listening to music, doing some study, watching tv, and playing the nintendo wii. The only things i can do indoors so pass the time. Oh, my host mum loves video games, how funny is that?! She likes playing pokemon and mario and on the Wii we each have our own file on supermario. She is actually pretty good at it!!

Today we went to a Ramen place for lunch. Ramen is like noodles and various meats and vegetables in a really nice sauce. It was so good! The funny thing was that where this place was, there was about 10 different Ramen restaurants all surrounding each other, and it was almost like a competition to see which place could bring in the most customers. At the front of each restaurant was a person shouting out to people walking by, telling them to come into the restaurant and what the specialties were to try and entice them. It was crazy!
This is the place, it was fairly dark in there.....







I apoligise for the pictures if some are sideways because i couldnt rotate them on the computer.

Also i will finish this blog with photos of me as a SAMURAI!!!!!!!!!!!

ENJOY-!